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In order to build VMs in Azure, Packer needs various configuration options. These options and how to obtain them are documented on this page.	docs	Setup - Azure - Builders	docs-builders-azure-setup

Authorizing Packer Builds in Azure

In order to build VMs in Azure Packer needs 6 configuration options to be specified:

subscription_id - UUID identifying your Azure subscription (where billing is handled)
client_id - UUID identifying the Active Directory service principal that will run your Packer builds
client_secret - service principal secret / password
resource_group_name - name of the resource group where your VHD(s) will be stored
storage_account - name of the storage account where your VHD(s) will be stored

-> Behind the scenes Packer uses the OAuth protocol to authenticate against Azure Active Directory and authorize requests to the Azure Service Management API. These topics are unnecessarily complicated so we will try to ignore them for the rest of this document.

You do not need to understand how OAuth works in order to use Packer with Azure, though the Active Directory terms "service principal" and "role" will be useful for understanding Azure's access policies.

In order to get all of the items above, you will need a username and password for your Azure account.

Device login is an alternative way to authorize in Azure Packer. Device login only requires you to know your Subscription ID. (Device login is only supported for Linux based VMs.) Device login is intended for those who are first time users, and just want to ''kick the tires.'' We recommend the SPN approach if you intend to automate Packer.

Device login is for interactive builds, and SPN is automated builds.

There are three pieces of information you must provide to enable device login mode.

SubscriptionID
Resource Group - parent resource group that Packer uses to build an image.
Storage Account - storage account where the image will be placed.

Device login mode is enabled by not setting client_id and client_secret.

Device login mode is for the Public and US Gov clouds only.

The device login flow asks that you open a web browser, navigate to http://aka.ms/devicelogin, and input the supplied code. This authorizes the Packer for Azure application to act on your behalf. An OAuth token will be created, and stored in the user's home directory (~/.azure/packer/oauth-TenantID.json). This token is used if the token file exists, and it is refreshed as necessary. The token file prevents the need to continually execute the device login flow. Packer will ask for two device login auth, one for service management endpoint and another for accessing temp keyvault secrets that it creates.

Install the Azure CLI

To get the credentials above, we will need to install the Azure CLI. Please refer to Microsoft's official installation guide.

-> The guides below also use a tool called jq to simplify the output from the Azure CLI, though this is optional. If you use homebrew you can simply brew install node jq.

You can also use the Azure CLI in Docker. It also comes with jq pre-installed:

$ docker run -it microsoft/azure-cli

Guided Setup

The Packer project includes a setup script that can help you setup your account. It uses an interactive bash script to log you into Azure, name your resources, and export your Packer configuration.

Manual Setup

If you want more control or the script does not work for you, you can also use the manual instructions below to setup your Azure account. You will need to manually keep track of the various account identifiers, resource names, and your service principal password.

Identify Your Tenant and Subscription IDs

$ az login
# Note, we have launched a browser for you to login. For old experience with device code, use "az login --use-device-code"

Once you've completed logging in, you should get a JSON array like the one below:

[
  {
    "cloudName": "AzureCloud",
    "id": "$uuid",
    "isDefault": false,
    "name": "Pay-As-You-Go",
    "state": "Enabled",
    "tenantId": "$tenant_uuid",
    "user": {
      "name": "my_email@anywhere.com",
      "type": "user"
    }
  }
]

Get your account information

$ az account list --output json | jq -r '.[].name'
$ az account set --subscription ACCOUNTNAME
$ az account show --output json | jq -r '.id'

-> Throughout this document when you see a command pipe to jq you may instead omit --output json and everything after it, but the output will be more verbose. For example you can simply run az account list instead.

This will print out one line that look like this:

4f562e88-8caf-421a-b4da-e3f6786c52ec

This is your subscription_id. Note it for later.

Create a Resource Group

A resource group is used to organize related resources. Resource groups and storage accounts are tied to a location. To see available locations, run:

$ az account list-locations
$ LOCATION=xxx
$ GROUPNAME=xxx
# ...

$ az group create --name $GROUPNAME --location $LOCATION

Your storage account (below) will need to use the same GROUPNAME and LOCATION.

Create a Storage Account

We will need to create a storage account where your Packer artifacts will be stored. We will create a LRS storage account which is the least expensive price/GB at the time of writing.

$ az storage account create \
  --name STORAGENAME
  --resource-group $GROUPNAME \
  --location $LOCATION \
  --sku Standard_LRS \
  --kind Storage

-> LRS and Standard_LRS are meant as literal "LRS" or "Standard_LRS" and not as variables.

Make sure that GROUPNAME and LOCATION are the same as above. Also, ensure that GROUPNAME is less than 24 characters long and contains only lowercase letters and numbers.

Create an Application

An application represents a way to authorize access to the Azure API. Note that you will need to specify a URL for your application (this is intended to be used for OAuth callbacks) but these do not actually need to be valid URLs.

First pick APPNAME, APPURL and PASSWORD:

APPNAME=packer.test
APPURL=packer.test
PASSWORD=xxx

Password is your client_secret and can be anything you like. I recommend using openssl rand -base64 24.

$ az ad app create \
  --display-name $APPNAME \
  --identifier-uris $APPURL \
  --home-page $APPURL \
  --password $PASSWORD

Create a Service Principal

You cannot directly grant permissions to an application. Instead, you create a service principal and assign permissions to the service principal. To create a service principal for use with Packer, run the below command specifying the subscription. This will grant Packer the contributor role to the subscription. The output of this command is your service principal credentials, save these in a safe place as you will need these to configure Packer.

az ad sp create-for-rbac -n "Packer" --role contributor \
                            --scopes /subscriptions/{SubID}

The service principal credentials.

{
  "appId": "AppId",
  "displayName": "Packer",
  "name": "http://Packer",
  "password": "Password",
  "tenant": "TenantId"
}

There are a lot of pre-defined roles and you can define your own with more granular permissions, though this is out of scope. You can see a list of pre-configured roles via:

$ az role definition list --output json | jq ".[] | {name:.roleName, description:.description}"

Configuring Packer

Now (finally) everything has been setup in Azure and our service principal has been created. You can use the output from creating your service principal in your template.

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